


i drank your potion, swallowed the sea

by thatgirlwho



Category: Kingsman (Movies)
Genre: Angst, Break Up, Infidelity, M/M, Unhappy Ending
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-01
Updated: 2017-03-01
Packaged: 2018-09-27 15:09:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,847
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10027382
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thatgirlwho/pseuds/thatgirlwho
Summary: He’s loved Eggsy in missteps and ill-timing and misguided intentions.He loves Eggsy, almost.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Warning: Harry cheats. He doesn't have a good reason. Their relationship is not good. No one wins.
> 
> Written for **hisreindeerjumper** , who prompted me with: "I hate you, but I think I hate myself more."
> 
> Title from "A Toast" by BRAVES which is gut wrenching. Self-beta'd.

It starts with the phone on the dining room table. **  
**

But it does not start there, not really. In truth, in reality, it has many starts: ones that come soft and ones jarring and some harsh and others embracing and ones they thought they would never get again. How many second chances could one person be given. 

But right now, the phone. Between them. Dividing the gap between them. Eggsy’s fingers tapping the empty space beside it, framing it. 

It is the catalyst, the collision, the catastrophe. 

He had held it so carefully. Like a bomb with the time ticking down. A grenade with the pin half-pulled. To someone else, watching him descend the stairs with the phone cradled in his hands, they would think he was protecting it, making sure he did not drop it, that it did not break.

This is not how it was. 

Something else. That could not break. Maybe already broken. He was holding these scattered discarded pieces. They were not all there and he could not find them. 

He is not sure what he was doing with it, holding it like this, what it meant, why he held the phone like this, resting in his open palm, when he wanted to throw it to the floor, smash it beneath his feet, scream. 

Stunned into silence. Shut down. He does this, sometimes. When he cannot think. When it is difficult to think. When he loses the way his thoughts go, slipping down in deep dark voids and yawning chasms and empty, empty halls. 

When he sets it down on the table–Harry’s eyes rising to catch his, perplexed, concerned, before it all slips from his features and he goes pale–he holds it between the fingers of one hand, hovering just above the surface. The dim yellow light above him catching the glass screen, the dark knots of wood in the table. The lacquer has lost its shine; everything seems dull, ugly in this room. 

Harry is staring at him. He does not move, suspended in this in-between. Fixed in the liminal space of their then and now. 

Harry knows what is coming, just as much as the other does, and his fingers curl into his palms, like he will fight it when it crashes over him, like they both won’t drown from this. Now is the time to see how can swim, who can hold their head above water, who can beat back against the current ripping them under. 

Eggsy let’s go of phone, from where it was raised above the table. It clatters with a sound so unbearably loud. Harry closes his eyes to it. He thinks he can shut this out. 

Eggsy can’t look away from what Harry looks like in this moment: withered and pale and distant, left adrift, to scorch in the sun. It sits like a suffocating weight in him, a cold gnawing recognition at what is to come. 

He realizes this: he is scared. Of truth. Of lies. Of what began–or what he thought had began–and seeing its end. 

“I don’t understand.”

Of course he doesn’t. He won’t even if he comes to his own conclusions eventually; he’ll know this, know that there is nothing to explain this, and he will have to quiet that part of himself to continue on. Could he be meticulous, thorough, trace with unsteady fingers back and back and back through history and find where it started and ended, on repeat; a painstaking retelling of their undoing told in reverse?

Why, what purpose would it serve? It’s done. It’s all been undone. Undone and done. There is nothing to reclaim, there is nothing to bring back with him, there is nothing to mend. 

But to know. To _know_.

More and more and more of this. 

He doesn’t understand. How could anyone? One of the great things impossible to grasp, not so much a mystery but a void of reason, of logical thought. How did they get there? How did he let this happen? How did he never know? There are no answers to these questions. He should know this. 

He is not asking the right questions. He never will will. They hurt far too much to ask at all. 

“I don’t understand,” because he must say it again. Because the silence is far too deafening and he wants to–he wants to–

“I can explain.”

Does Eggsy want that, for Harry to explain? He doesn’t know. Explain gives way to thoughts of sordid details and half-formed reasons and spinning, trailing, out of motion, of being trapped, of slipping beneath, of losing air. 

Back to Harry, sitting in his chair with his hands gripped together now, resting over his lap. He is a man floundering on land. He will come out of this carrying ghosts and a heavier weight and yet his hurts do not go so deep. 

How was he going to talk himself out of this one, right? Someone says it, laughing, in the back of Harry’s mind, and it’s the worst sound, cloying and clanging and scraping across rough-hewn edges. Catching and tripping and stuttering. 

“Who is he?”

“Someone–a man. I met.”

Eggsy looks past him. 

“At a bar, a few weeks ago. I didn’t think–it was the one time.”

Harry talks like this is something that happened to someone else. Like an affront that was done upon him. Recounting, retelling, his words all sound a few beats off, missing the melody, the words don’t fit. A dizzying distance that makes Eggsy feel sick, light headed, swaying in his chair as he catches his breath in small gasps. 

“It was only supposed to be the one time,” Harry says. 

“Just the one time.” Eggsy, tapping the table with his fingertips, in time with the clock in the hall. Harry fingers the worn leather strap of his watch on his wrist. “But he’s sending you messages. And you’re–you’re answering him. Texting him back.”

Suddenly, Eggsy snatches up the phone again. Harry never made a move for it (is this important, that you know how little Harry does through all this, how he remains so impassive and lifeless, sitting across from Eggsy, waiting for what comes next?) 

Whatever this is, all this, all the dread and excitement and nerves lodge up at the back of his throat. He opens the phone, pulls up the messages. 

“Miss you,” Eggsy reads out. “Hope you’re thinking of me.”

Harry runs his hands across the bevelled lip of the table. 

“Of course I am–is what you said,” Eggsy continues, a finger pointed blindly at Harry. (He is going to stumble on the words because they have to come from such a long way, from his head and his chest and the angry ugly ache all over. Harry will attribute it to heartache and he is only partially right.) “You–you are marvellous. Stunning.”

_Oh yeah, what else do you like about me?_

Harry remembers that. The thrill it gave him as he sat in his office, his hands warm and shaking. He did not think of Eggsy at all. 

Eggsy is staring at the phone, his face illumined by the sallow light. His eyes are bleary, unfocused, wet. He does not blink. He continues to read: “The feel of my cock in your beautiful mouth. The feel of you three fingers deep in me. The way you fucked me and said my name– _Christ_ , Harry.” Eggsy drags a hand over his face, tosses the phone back on the table. It clatters, slides across the top. The only sound in the room. 

“You gave him your number.”

(Harry–Harry, is he sorry? No.  What a concept to admit, to know of oneself. What an abhorrent, disgusting, horrid truth and it does not change a thing.) 

The relief, _oh_ , he would not admit that. That comes with this moment. Underneath, scored through the dread and disquiet and the furious painful hurtling towards the end, there is relief. Undone and done. 

It starts there. There, where whatever this turned out to be, whatever word or explanation they could put to their being together, and how it never quite joined. Missing links. Misaligned. Misshapen. 

Always touching but not enough to hold on. 

It’s starts with Harry. Not with Eggsy. 

With Harry because it never started with him at all. 

Not with Eggsy because, for him, it was something, whatever it amounted to. 

It comes back to Harry, whether he wants it or not. 

“I did.”

“Why?”

That is the question Eggsy needs to ask. He is terrified of its answer. 

“I don’t know.”

It is not a lie. He only knows this: the relief, the ill unease, the aftermath. How did he get here. How did he get here. How did he get here. 

A boy–no, don’t _call_  him that. Sometimes he still did. In his head. Out loud. (The amused irritated twist of Eggsy’s mouth when he did, the soft slope of his throat, the wrinkles around his eyes when he would search for what he wanted to find in Harry.) He tries to fix it. He is bad with fixing old habits. 

He says it starts with Eggsy and Harry thinks–has always thought–he is beautiful; he is kind and tender and loving and something right, for once. All good things, Harry describes him in positive definitive. No room for error. Eggsy loves him and he thinks it’s what he needs. For somebody to love him. 

Isn’t that what the others had always said–you are lonely, you are getting old, you need someone with you. 

He found someone. He found Eggsy. Eggsy found him, too. Didn’t it make sense, for it to be the both of them? For Eggsy to love Harry with abandon, with his everything, with devotion and divinity? Divinity and divine–worshipped. Harry felt _worshipped_. Worshipped and desired and needed. 

Did he feel loved? Possibly not. He wasn’t sure. He’s sure Eggsy does love him but–

No, Eggsy does love him. Did love him. Loved him. 

Still loves him, but fractured. Fissures and fault lines and breaking apart, split at all the seams. 

No, the question isn’t if he felt loved–it is: did he love him back?

In a way, yes. In a way, no. 

Maybe. Sometimes. Some more than others. Some less. 

There is no good answer. So he can’t give one. 

He looked at Eggsy and saw a magnificent act of blinding beautiful providence and he loves the taste of Eggsy’s skin and he loves the warmth of him beside him in the mornings and he loves the sound of his footsteps in the hall–but he also loves the man from the bar for the way his lips felt against his, loves the man for the way his fingers slipped the buttons from their loops on his shirt, loves the man for holding his hands above his head and fucking him and leaving in the morning. 

He loves them both and for the wrong reasons. 

He is lonely. He is getting old. He needed someone. 

He didn’t mean to hurt Eggsy. (He will say that. He did not mean this.)

“I didn’t mean to hurt you.”

Eggsy laughs, a rip right through, torn from both ends. His gaze goes blank, detached. He’s disoriented, eyes drifting, leaning over in his chair. Away from the phone. 

“I hate you.” Eggsy says it, toneless and flat; he has practiced this, in his head, said it over and over until it fell from his mouth without a struggle. (Does he mean it? He must. He would not say it otherwise.) “I hate you but I think I hate myself more.”

Harry loves them in the wrong way. Eggsy and the man who had the taste of whiskey on his lips. The wrong way for what they gave and it–stops there. Eggsy, familiar and warm and smiling in the morning. The man, wild and wondrous and unattached. 

He’s loved Eggsy in missteps and ill-timing and misguided intentions. 

He loves Eggsy, almost. 

“For letting this–you–for believing this was it. You were _it_  for me.”

(Is it important to note that Eggsy cannot, will not, look at Harry? In a moment like this, yes. Yes yes yes, it’s all important.)

Harry knew this. It’s why he stayed, he thinks. He knows it’s why he stayed. How much more Eggsy loved him and how apparent that was. Harry thought he hid it well. 

He sighs, tired. He feels old, far older than his years. 

“Tell me.”

“Tell you what?”

“That I’m not good enough.”

“That’s not true.” This is the truth. He is, he is, he is more than enough for anyone–but not for Harry. The outlier, the outcast, the black sheep. 

He doesn’t fit. 

This is not about Harry. (It is.) 

It’s about Eggsy.  (It always has been and never was and it is both and it’s _impossible_.)

“Didn’t I deserve you?” 

Is that it, who deserves and who does not? Who decides? Certainly not them. Not either of them. How do you measure the worth of anyone, how do you judge accordingly, how does anyone deserve when they are all but disfigured with their flaws, left resplendent and shimmering in their virtue?

Who gives, who takes. 

“What do you want me to say?”

Even yet, Eggsy hesitates. What, if anything, was there to say? He could not stomach reasons or apologies. A harsh, exacting precision of truth. A soft letdown, lies made easy to swallow. They are not, they never are, wrapped in barbs and wire and they carve their long, marring paths through when they are choked down. 

What to say: I loved you, once. I love you still. I never loved you at all. 

What is best? What hurts less, whether measured in vast microcosms or infinitesimal millimetres or the absence of anything in between?

None of it sounds right, to either of them, so it is all left unsaid. How much they have left unsaid because they never learned to speak with each other this way. Eggsy wonders if it would have saved this, if that if ever an effort was made–and he knows he is foolish to even think it. It was going to come to this, he knows, no matter what he had done. Whatever path they took, whatever battles they fought, whatever falsities and deceptions and evasions they made use of, it was all winding tangled roads leading to here. 

It would always end here. 

It is not _this_. It was what the absence of what they thought they had that has brought them here. 

If someone came to him, to Eggsy, and told him, _this was not your choice to make_ , he would not believe them. (Why should he? He has been lied to before. He knows what it sounds like. Quietly softly tragically known.)

(There is no way out of this way but through, with bloodied hands and bruised bodies. There is no possibility of coming out of this unscathed. They will not survive as the same men they were at the beginning. In this moment, they cannot remember who those men were, what things that had dreamt and said and known. They will not find them again.)

So, here it starts and ends. With the phone between them and the tapping of Eggsy’s fingers and the ceaseless ticking of the clock and Harry’s bated breath and the exhale of hidden elation on the out-breath and miles and miles and miles widening between them. 

Harry places his hand over Eggsy’s. Eggsy does not resist. (This is not a sign to be mistaken for hope. It is nothing at all. Harry does not realize that. Not yet. He will hold on for a little while longer.)

“I never meant to hurt you.” He has said this already. Easier to repeat things once said than to reveal more truths and falsehoods.

“Didn’t I–” No, he will not cry here; he will not mourn or grieve like you do for the dead, though something has passed by them, by him, a brush of what once was, a shiver of afterlife settling in– “Don’t I deserve better?”

(This is not directed at Harry. This is not a question needed to be asked but it is. This question is one with no satisfying answer.)

Impossible things to grasp. Who gives and who takes. 

“I deserve better,” he reminds himself. A steadying, shuddering breath. He does not pull his hand away from Harry’s. It is not an indication of anything. 

There is nothing. 

There is the phone between them. 

There is Harry, touching him, gently, in the old way, in the way he once knew how. It will not last long. They are losing their last minutes to the undisturbed, the hushed, the soundless. All the things left unsaid. 

There is a time of before and after and how it all began. 

It never began at all, if they are being honest. 

How impossible it is be that–honest.  


**Author's Note:**

> Come find me at **[notbrogues](http://notbrogues.tumblr.com)**!


End file.
